Tag Archives: csa

That, my dear friends, was a doozie of a farming season. The last farmer’s market was yesterday; our last CSA box went out on Tuesday. We just harvested the last of the corn and tomatoes to process for winter, and … Continue reading →

You’ve all heard me talk about our neighbours. They’re all kinds of awesome. All kinds, I swear. A couple of weeks ago they had a chicken who was going through a rough time. She was blind in one eye from some kind of infection, and the other chickens were giving her a run for her money (the term “henpecked” comes from somewhere and it sure isn’t pretty). She’d lost half of her comb, and her skull was visible in parts. Our lovely neighbours asked if we’d take her for a bit, to give her a reprieve from their birds who knew her place in line and were relentless in their attacks. Of course we agreed, and for a couple of days “Scabby” lived in our house. When our neighbours found out that “Scabby” wasn’t well enough to live outside with our other birds, they took her back and built her a lovely pen. They brought her over a dog house and made her feel special. Her comb healed over, her skin closed up and her feathers started growing back. We even decided that maybe we shouldn’t call her Scabby, so kind of renamed her Sorrel, but I don’t know if that’s really going to stick. A nickname’s a nickname, even if it’s not a nice one, right?

*Yes. All of this mimics schoolyard politics, nicknames and all. Yes, I feel emotional about it. Yes, she’s a chicken and I eat chicken. What’s your point?

Anyways, we ended up taking Scabby/Sorrel back last week. Chickens shouldn’t be all alone and our birds didn’t see her as the recluse nerd who deserved to be locked into her own locker. We were still trying to figure out how to encourage her to be social with the other birds, but she was a bit of a recluse. She may just have been smarter than them. She is a Houdini, and never ever seems to be in the pen, but is out wandering the garlic or the potatoes or the kale. We’ve never actually seen her escape, and none of the other birds get out. She’s just kinda like that.

Until today, when she wasn’t wandering and wasn’t clucking around with the other ladies either. Until today, when the remains of a white chicken was dropped, unceremoniously, onto our neighbours’ yard by an eagle. Until Scabby/Sorrel couldn’t be found and was determined to have died as she had lived – free.

Until she was found, hours later, wandering the garlic. Free. Alive.

I don’t know where this chicken got her lives, but she’s certainly got lots of them. And I’m sorry for whichever bird’s life ran out today… maybe that bird lived happily with it’s compatriots and was ready to go. Who knows.

Here’s a picture of a flower and our 2nd CSA box of the year (it has garlic scapes in it!).

There’s been so many letters and blog posts and comments out there about the teacher’s strike and accompanying non-negotiations with the government, and while I have many strong feelings and beliefs about the situation, I’m not going to wade those waters on the internet for a whole variety of reasons, some of which I’m sure you can extrapolate. We’ll just leave that at that, and I’ll talk farming instead.

Our first CSA box went out this week. It was lovely and exciting, and driving around in our new truck made delivery feel a lot better. We’ve got garlic scapes growing in the garden, and they’ll be in this week’s box. We’re transplanting a million of things, and doing our best to keep everything watered… which is more work than it should be this time of year. By no means am I actually wishing for a June-uary, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing for the garden. I feel like I must have other things to say, but maybe I’ll say them some other time…

I am absolutely amazed at how quickly time is passing. I feel like our first box went out yesterday. I feel like I just got back from Strathcona. I feel like May started last week…

Our first box went out on Wednesday, and all of the feedback has been super positive. We’ve done 3 markets now, and all have been a success. We’ve eaten our first strawberries, and we’re looking forward to harvesting many more – hopefully enough for the box. It’s been so rainy for the past couple of weeks that we haven’t been able to plant much in the garden. The soil was close to soup and Jer was worried about working it too much – there were trays and trays of plants waiting to get their feet in the ground. Now there’s many fewer trays. The sun shone today, and yesterday as well, and Jer’s been busy. Me too, and my mom! My mom and stepdad came out on the weekend with a wardrobe that’s been in our family forever. My grandpa refurnished it for us. I was really excited to get it – our bedroom doesn’t have a real closet, although it does have amazing shelves that Jer built for me because he’s awesome like that – but no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t get it up the stairs. It’s in our kitchen now, and we’ll be storing something in it sooner or later… once we figure out where we want it to live.

It was refreshing and rewarding for my mom to be here for the weekend. Every time she comes I’m so proud of what we’re doing, and how we’re doing it. Her and I are so very different, but we have such a deep respect for each other, and I just love to be able to share with her what we have here. She weeded chard with us in the garden, and she got to see us at the market on the weekend, which was super special too. She brought us boxes and boxes of canning jars from my grandparents and great aunt – cases that we would have to buy eventually! And she brought us a crokinole board that my grandmother found at a garage sale. We must have played 10 games over the weekend… I’m almost as pathetic as I am at golf (although I don’t usually miss the disc completely, which I do at golf), and Jer’s a ringer.

As for other exciting news, I accepted a 3-day/week teaching position for the fall, teaching grade 4 and grade 6. It’s not my ideal job, but it’s a job and hopefully I’ll be able to pick up shifts. Plus, it’s a load off my back for the summer.

We sold our first CSA box last week, and it was picked up yesterday. For those of you that don’t know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a way for farmers to make money before the season starts. It encourages relationships between farmers and consumers. It encourages consumers to try things they wouldn’t normally (like next week we’ll put broad beans, or fava beans, into our customer’s box, which is totally fun!) and it’s a way for farmers to offset the huge costs at the beginning of a season (for seeds, new equipment, etc.) because usually boxes are bought either for a season, or half of a season. We didn’t plan on doing a box program this year, but the opportunity came our way, and it’s good practice for next year, when we hope to have a program up and running. This week our box, which was for a family of 4.5 (the .5 is a munchkin due in October) included cabbage, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, pac choi, kale and peas. It’s a little tricky at the beginning of the season because you don’t want a box to be the same every week, but you only have so many vegetables. That said, we’ll have a couple of different things on the menu next week because our peas will probably be done until the fall. The zucchini is looking good and we may have a couple for market tomorrow (or we may save them for our loyal box customer next week), and we’re starting to get loads of green tomatoes on the plants.

Our visitors from Calgary were some of the best house guests we’ve ever had, and the twin girls did an enormous amount of work in the garden. They left this morning, and I’m already a little bit sad. The good news is we’ve got friends we made in Bella Coola coming with their family tomorrow.